


The Periphery of Things

by shootybangbang (peonylanterns)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Chinese folklore, Extremely short chapters, F/M, Gore, Suicidal Ideation, biblical imagery, this is experimental as hell so just bear with me for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2019-10-31 22:42:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17858384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peonylanterns/pseuds/shootybangbang
Summary: "I don’t know if I was real then," you tell him. "I don’t know if I’m real now. There is a physical body. There is a concrete sense of being. But in between those things there is a boundless intermediary in which the idea of me is blurry and vague. Caught between two certainties, but reaching neither of them."———arthur morgan/a literal fucking demon





	1. you are what you eat

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by songofproserpine's fic "make a meal of death". 
> 
> The imagery and abstract prose combined with the supernatural atmosphere of the story really make it one of the best fics I've ever read. Give it a read.

part 0: the rise, the fall

 

“This is my last gift to you”, she said.

And you ate of her. You closed your jaws around the dying, feeble beats of her human heart and bit down, and with each swallow of blood, each mouthful of flesh, you _became_.

When you woke from your feast, you were clothed in an unfamiliar skin.

You took your first steps in a ruined house, crawling and clawing your way upwards beside the desecrated corpse of someone you once would have called “mother”, were it not for your dumb animal tongue. You took your first breath with your fingers caked in dried blood and the taste of her entrails in your mouth.

Then you opened your eyes and saw, truly _saw_ , the depth of things. And with that knowledge, the wild purity of beasthood melted from your being, leaving in its wake the empty comfort of consciousness.

You looked to the ruinous heap of viscera that had once been a woman, to that shell of bones that had once held someone dear in their ghastly embrace, and you wept.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah, i don't know what this is either.


	2. meals, interrupted

part 1: favors

 

“Big, nasty thing,” the rancher says, holding his hands out in exaggeration. “Never seen one like it. Took down two of my oxen in as many months.”

Arthur nearly spits out his coffee. “Oxen? You serious?”

“Would I be out here offerin’ reward money if I wasn’t? I know what I saw. That thing is a goddamn monster.”

Still skeptical but somewhat intrigued, Arthur shrugs. “Alright. Let me have a look at things, then.”

 

———

 

part 2: the hunter, the hunted

 

He finds the ox carcass in the densest part of the woods, near the entrance of a long abandoned mine. The great black mass twitches and jerks as the animal beneath it rips and gnaws at its innards with vicious pleasure. Coiled ropes of intestine spill from the yawning red cavity of its belly, from which curve white protrusions of bone — ribs, licked clean.

The fox’s maw is red and matted with ox blood. It consumes with a single-minded hunger, devouring and tearing and deconstructing bit by bit the fruit of its slaughter.

Arthur aims his rifle, centering the fox’s head in its crosshairs. But before he can pull the trigger, the animal looks backwards and stares straight down his sights, and he has the unsettling sensation of being _known,_ of being _seen_ in a way that’s all too human.

It turns tail and bolts as he fires the shot, but the bullet catches the animal’s hind leg. The creature screams — and it’s the scream of a woman, furious and wild with insensate fear — then makes a mad dash for the mine, leaving behind it a trail of spattered blood.

Badly shaken, with the rising realization that he’s done something terribly wrong, Arthur follows.


	3. paths chosen

part 1: past sins

 

Oh, but you chose this. You tore apart your old self, ripped it from your body like a shroud — and for what? Was it worth it, to give up the naïveté and comfort of simplicity?

Now you are dirtied and changed, you are cognizant of your sins and your shame and the impossibility of forgiveness. Transgressions, once made, are forever marked.

You tried to go back. You picked up the faded shreds of the past and tried to cover yourself again. Back to beasthood. Back to ignorance. Back to the welcome peace of incomprehension.

 

———

 

past 2: old skins

 

But there is no return. That which is left behind crumbles and rots, falling through your fingers in a handful of dust.

Your old instincts gone, your human aspect shining through the cracks like a wretched beacon —once upon a time, that bullet would have never reached you.

 

———

 

part 3: the depths

 

He’d heard whispers from the locals that the old Fremont mine was haunted. There were rumors of a dead woman, crawling up from the depths, her arms wide and her long hair twined with twigs and mud.

At the time, Arthur had rolled his eyes. Now though, as he swings the lantern further into the suffocating dark, he can’t deny the thrill of apprehension that runs down his spine.

The fox couldn’t have gone far. The bloody tracks run closer and closer together, its long, even strides staggering into a crooked limp, a desperate crawl. Drag marks, long and thin, like brushstrokes against stone.

He can hear someone breathing from down below. The sound of it echoes up from a sunken shaft, reverberating and resounding into every corner of the chamber.

Arthur steels his shoulders, and descends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> owo what's this
> 
> could it possibly be an exploration of personal angst through self indulgent fic?


	4. downwards

part 1: things below

 

The sounds of his approach float down the mineshaft and settle at its inevitable end. There, tired and wounded, you lean your weary body against the rough hewn stone wall and wait.

 _Hell lies beneath our feet_ , the Lemoyne preacher had thundered. _Brimstone and black flames. A lake of fire, scorched earth, the screams of the damned._

And he told you, while looking through you with a disturbing clarity, that you’d go there one day. That it was there things like you returned to.

So you guess it’s fitting that you’d die here of all places — entombed deep underground in an artificial cave.

It’s cold in here. But you suppose you’ll be warm soon enough.

 

———

 

part 2: descending

 

He’s killed far too many to still be afraid of the dead.

What harm can a corpse do to him? What kind of retribution can a vengeful ghost bring that the living cannot? By now, he’s realized that the fear of the dead is an empty horror, born not of the thing itself but that which it implies: the surety of one’s own fate.

And yet he keeps his hand on the holster of his gun as he descends, holds the lantern with a white-knuckled grip as he listens to the soft, pained noises the thing at the end of the tunnel makes. He can hear the quickening of its breaths as he approaches, matching the pace of his own heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been reading paradise lost by john milton recently. pretentious references incoming, probably.


	5. a request

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: suicidal ideation

part 1: what the fuck

 

The woman at the end of the tunnel is clothed only in blood. Ox blood, dripping from her chin and smeared across her face and chest. Her own, flowing from the hole punched through her thigh with weak, dying pulses. She looks up at him, her skin slicked with cold sweat and coal dust, and spits at his feet.

“Make it quick,” you snarl.

Dumbfounded, Arthur just stands and stares. He fumbles for words, but fails to retrieve anything more coherent than a small, flat utterance of his complete incomprehension.

“What the fuck,” he says.

He takes a careful step backward, and you manage a high, mocking laugh.

“What’s the matter?” you jeer. “You running away now?”

Wild-eyed, baring your teeth in a feral approximation of a grin, you brace your hands against the cave floor and drag yourself towards him, ignoring the painful scrape of stone against your bare skin.

“Come and get me, hunter.”

 

part 2: the art of dying, botched

 

There is a soft, tremulous whisper of fear that belies the ferocity in your voice. Your lips are pale, your body is shaking, your breaths labored and weak… and through the haze of unreality settling over his senses, he recognizes two things:

 

  1. you’re dying
  2. you’re terrified



 

Arthur takes his hand off the holster of his gun. Slowly, without looking away from you, he crouches low and sets the lantern on the ground. Then he pulls the bandanna from around his neck and gestures towards your thigh. 

“Let me see that leg,” he says. “See if I can staunch the bleeding.”

“I don’t need your pity.” A rising tone of desperation. High and piercing, a plea for death. “Hurry up and shoot me.”

You’re on your knees. Upturned gaze, irises almost golden in the lamplight, glowing with animal iridescence — but animals, in spite of all the agonies of existence, strive always to persist, crawling brokenly onwards to cling to the very edge of survival. The willingness to die in your eyes, that peculiar weakness of man, is hauntingly human.


	6. pleas(e)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: suicidal ideation

There is an eagerness in you that disturbs him far more than the blood and teeth and gore. “Come on then,” you say softly, coaxingly, tender as any lover, splaying your fingers against your chest to frame your buried heart. “Quickly.”

The flicker of yellow fire refracted through the lantern’s glass casts faltering shadows against the walls. Even as you are still, your silhouette moves with a menacing air, approaching and retreating and wavering like black smoke. 

“What did you come for if not to kill me?” you ask.

He shakes his head slowly, in the manner of a man half entranced. “I don’t know,” Arthur admits. “But I ain’t here to hurt you.”

“But that’s what I  _ want _ , you fool. That’s what I  _ deserve _ .” Your hand darts forward and seizes a fistful of his shirt, leaving black and red stains in the cloth as you wrench yourself towards him. 

“If you won’t shoot me, then leave me,” you growl, low and bestial, your mouth still dark with animal blood. “Or I’ll tear out your throat.”

He doesn’t flinch when you claw your way up his body, digging your fingers into his shoulders and clinging to him like a drowning woman. “I’ll kill you,” you whisper. Your breath is hot against his neck, the click of your canines sharp in his ear as you threaten him. “I’ll rip you apart and devour you if you won’t.”

Arthur lets you pull his free hand to your throat. “Do it,” you beg him, voice high and thin as you wrap his fingers around your neck. “Do it before I lose my nerve.”


End file.
